Fields of Sunflowers

There are so many sunflowers blooming right now on the hills behind our house. I found the perfect sunflower patch last week and had to get out there and snap some photos. Thanks Bethany for lending me your daughters. Amanda and Noami did a great job!



ISO 200 shot at 1/200 sec. @ f8 with a modified"Vindauga Vintage" action


ISO 200 shot at 1/200 sec. @ f8




ISO 200 1/160 sec. @ f6.3 with "Toy Camera" action




Same picture as above without the action


ISO 200 1/100 sec. @f5.3


ISO 200 1/200 sec. @f8


ISO 200 1/200 sec. @f10


ISO 200 1/200 sec. @f7


ISO 200 1/125 sec. f5.6

Iso 200 1/200 sec. f8

ISO 200 1/200 sec. @f8

ISO 200 1/200 sec. @f8

Wildflowers

I really love hiking somewhere with lots of wildflowers, here a couple of my flower pics from our hike up Lytle Creek. All these photos were shot in Auto Mode with my Nikon D-80.

.


.

.

These were my favorites, they looked like miniature daisies.

.

These were definitely the strangest....they were some sort of weird fuzz-ball thing. My friend Niccole said, "They look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book". She was right. (Our group of hikers are in the background.)

Photoshop Actions

I love playing with Photoshop Actions. Here are two of the sites I get free Actions.
.
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?s=5&from=1&o=desc&cat=190&l=-1&event=productHome&exc=16
.
http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm
.
Today I downloaded some new Actions. Here is my original Photo.

.
Gavin's Soft Action

.
Hollywood Effect Action


Aly's Black & Color

Huntington Gardens

Yesterday I made it back to Huntington Botanical Gardens. I was very anxious to check out the new Chinese Garden. The noon day sun was brutal. Most of what I shot ended up with combinations of harsh shadows and blown out sun areas. Here are a couple of the shots that turned out o.k.

.

.

There we lots of beautiful white granite bridges (All hand carved). The "fish bridge" was my favorite.

I also spent time in the Japanese Garden (photo below). The weeping willow behind the wooden bridge is one my favorite trees on the entire grounds.

I had to do so much tweeking to the photos because of the bright spots and shadows that I'm not listing Metadata this time.